Still, the show stands out because it isn't just 'Monster of the Week.' As our lead hero Kappei Jin and his allies fight the Gaizok, countless homes and towns are demolished in the process, and whereas some later series such as, say, Megas XLR would just play it all for laughs, Zambot plays it all completely straight. The results would have been a turning point for the Humongous Mecha Genre had it caught on, with greater maturity and sophistication in the storytelling and a much darker atmosphere. But alas, this wasn't to be, and it wouldn't be until a couple of years later, when Gundam was broadcast and the Real Robot genre was invented, that the next big advance in the Humongous Mecha genre would occur (both shows were directed by the same guy, no less!).

Bittersweet Ending: The series ultimately ends with many innocents killed, much of Japan completely wrecked, and several members of Kappei's family dead, including his teammates - but also with Gaizok's assessment that Humans Are Bastards proven wrong, as a crowd of people flock to Kappei to finally cheer him as a hero.

Jerkass: Kappei is a total asshole at first, deliberately refusing to have his machine combine with the others, nearly killing someone by pretending to punch them while in the machine, and pretty much mucking things up more than he needs to.

Kaiju: The Mecha Boosts are technically robots, but they generally look more like organic monsters you might find in a Godzilla film.

Off Model: Thanks to the reasons outlined above, this happened constantly.

Omniscient Morality License: So it's okay for Uchuta and Kappei to mock Keiko and imply she hasn't been weaned off her mother's breast milk and then laugh when she rips her birthday present kimono in the process of trying to grab them. It was all just to piss her off so she'd storm off and go visit her mother. Sure. That makes up for being, you know, asses for no real reason.

Gaizok is actually a super computer designed to find and destroy any creature with an evil intent in the universe.

Psychopathic Manchild: Butcher's not only a completely unforgivable asshole, but spends most of his on screen time acting like a moron. Makes it all the more terrifying when he turns killing people into a game.

Reality Ensues: Kids being pilots of a Humongous Mecha can actually be psychologically straining, and immaturity can lead to deaths. Also, cities do not get magically repaired after getting smashed down during a battle between giant robots, and often the cast has to fight on the ruins of a city destroyed in an earlier battle.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy